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IITs just got tougher
Much heartburn, and a resolution
There are disadvantages |
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Fifty fifty
ON RECORD
PROFILE: Timeri Murari
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Much heartburn, and a resolution
The
new IIT-JEE won’t be a single test. It would have two tiers. The first — JEE Main — for filtering purpose would be the AIEEE, which the CBSE will conduct. Any engineering aspirant after clearing Class XII can take the JEE Main, which will have the AIEEE syllabus. Top 1.5 lakh scorers of the Mains will get to take the JEE Advanced, which the IITs will hold after six weeks of the Mains for admission to their system. For the first time thus, IIT entry would be restricted to the 1.5 lakh screened students. From 2013, IIT merit rankings would depend solely on the results of the JEE Advanced, which will most likely be a combination of long and short questions, instead of multiple-choice questions (MCQs). Most importantly, IITs will prepare all-India rankings only for those JEE Advanced takers who also figure in the top 20 percentile of the successful board exam candidates in that year. In CBSE’s Class 12 exam, the last student in the 20 percentile bracket scored 78 per cent in 2011. Corresponding scores of the last students in UP and Tamil Nadu Boards were 65 and 78 per cent, respectively. The Council of Boards of Secondary Education has promised to tell students the equivalent percentages of 20 percentile bracket so they know what to target for IIT entry. Also, those who took Class 12 this year can reappear in 2013 to improve their school scores and protect the two chances they get at IITs. This is important, considering 50 per cent students who enter IITs annually are those who have succeeded in the second attempt.
Is the new JEE different? Not really. Except for the increased eligibility to school marks, it is not very different from the old system. JEE Main is ditto AIEEE, and the JEE Advanced will be old JEE most likely, with some subjective element. “The only big change is you now have to be among the top 20 percentile to be eligible for IITs. This is a reasonably good restriction, considering the cultural bias for IITs, which pushes every student to take JEE. Screening from JEE Mains will be good as it would help the IITs design JEE Advanced better and even assess subjective answers, as the load would come down from 5 lakh candidates to 1.5 lakh candidates,” says Shashank Chingalgiri, IIT Kanpur alumnus. He feels the new system would encourage students to score better at school, and they would be in a position to expand their choices in case they fail to make the grade for IITs.
Is the new AIEEE-JEE combine better? Today, there are 100 different exams for engineering entrance in India and students are forced to restrict their choice for want of time or money. Every exam entails a fee, around Rs 1,000 for JEE and Rs 450 for AIEEE, with some relaxations for weaker sections. The new regime would give students more choices. “The new AIEEE-JEE combine, with weight for school marks in selections, will restore the dignity of the secondary school system. If students fail at IITs, they can always compete to enter higher education. The lost dignity of teachers will also be restored. Selections will become more inclusive after dependence on coaching reduces. Not every family can send children for expensive coaching, but can inspire their wards to take Class 12 seriously,” CBSE Chairman Vineet Joshi says. However, the HRD Minister is not confident the coaching system will end. For that, “technical institutes would have to start testing students for what they know instead of for what they don’t,” he
says.
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There are disadvantages
The
new IIT-JEE test would be restrictive. Only the top 1.5 lakh students filtered through the AIEEE (JEE Main) would get to take the JEE Advanced, a move experts see as unjust. “Today IIT-JEE comprises Paper 1 and 2, both held on the same day and open to all. Candidates’ aggregate scores in physics, chemistry, maths are calculated to see if they have attained the prescribed subject cut-offs. If yes, they are evaluated. Otherwise, they are discarded. But they write the test. In the new system, you are taking away a students’ right to take the IIT test. Today, 4.5 lakh candidates take JEE. From 2013, 1.5 lakh will take it. The elite IITs will become even more elitist,” argues Prof Rajeev Kumar of IIT Kharagpur, who led several reforms in IIT-JEE. He also questions the 20 percentile condition, saying it would potentially exclude poor students who don’t get access to good schools. He says for the new test to succeed, there should first be a common school curriculum, uniform Class 12 question paper design, and questions of the same difficulty level. Prof YN Singh of IIT Kanpur also feels the top 20 percentile eligibility would stress out students. “First, they will have to top the JEE Main and then they would write the JEE Advanced not knowing whether they would be even eligible to enter IITs, depending on their school marks. In the first year of the new test, this 20 percentile condition would have to be relaxed,” he says. ...and advantages
Poor students can excel
“He had no access to study material; his house
didn’t have electricity supply beyond three hours. He still topped
Class 12,” Vineet Joshi says. He adds that on an average only 4.5
lakh students take the current IIT-JEE annually, while 11 lakh take
the AIEEE. “The existing system will continue. At present, 25 lakh
students across India’s boards take Class XII science stream exam
annually. Of these, 20 percentile would make 5 lakh. That’s the
number currently taking JEE. The rest can take the AIEEE to enter NITs,
etc,” Joshi explains. Girls can gain
By contrast, in Class 12 CBSE exam, girls traditionally
outshine boys. This year, they had a pass percentage of 86.21 as
against 75.80 for boys. “Girls don’t enter IITs because parents
can’t send them to Kota for coaching. But the new test system will
give girls an edge and the existing gender imbalance in technical
education would be corrected,” Sibal believes.
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Fifty fifty Kishwar Desai
We have experienced all that in the crumbling stadia that were built for the Commonwealth Games. As a reward for their incompetence and alleged corruption, the main culprits are apparently out on bail, and are now attending parties and weddings. But there is no excuse for what has happened in the NHAI — where no one has been punished for the shocking state of the planned roads. I am not just angry, I am furious. Is this how callously our tax money is being spent? And, more importantly, why is no one speaking up? I could not believe what havoc has been created in the name of development between Delhi and Jalandhar. I remember this road when I last drove on it more than a decade ago. It might not have been perfect — as it wends its way through three states in various stages — but there was nothing like the present chaos which could only have been created very deliberately, by a completely sadistic mind. And I am appalled that as a country we seem to be quiet about what is obviously a huge scandal. Almost the entire road has been dug up in portions and there are huge amounts of dirt piled up in the centre of the highway. Not only is this dangerous, it is a nightmare before the monsoons, when those mud mountains will come tumbling down and create impossible hurdles for the traveller. There are no pedestrian crossings on the portions which have survived this haphazard development, and it was decidedly, heart-stoppingly dangerous when villagers tried to scamper across high-speed lanes, with cars travelling at the mandatory 90 km per hour. All the pedestrian walkways were suspended in midair and most of them lay unfinished. This death trap seems to have been carefully planned. There are stretches which are fairly smooth —and others where despite the mud mountains we saw zero work happening and absolutely no workers. Not even lounging around. It seemed as though we were in a lawless country, and no one really cares. Cranes and trucks were parked all over the place — without a single human being in them. Throughout the stretch, construction sites lay abandoned. In fact, given the fact that the monsoon will be here soon, work should have been carried out round the clock, including Sundays. Only the toll gates were being operated very efficiently — and there was no compunction in charging us over Rs 200 for using a completely ramshackle road. What was even more frightening was that the highway seemed to be very poorly lit even though there were random blockages all over. I could imagine the plight of the drivers at night. And yet this road connects three of the richest states in India. It makes one extremely suspicious indeed. Where is all the money — including that collected at the toll gates — being spent? Why has work not been completed before the monsoon, when, as we know, even normal roads do not survive? According to some pundits (who shall go nameless), the construction company might have run out of money. Others say the government has run out of money. Or is it just the usual way in which we conduct our business, which is the main reason foreign capital is flying away. Who can afford to invest in infrastructure when there are no deadlines and a horrible mess is created which will take years to unscramble. Feeling sorry for us, someone suggested that we try an alternative route to Jalandhar via Chandigarh, as that might be less problematic. What we found was that almost everyone had the same idea, and the road was even worse because it was crowded and overflowing — almost like one non-stop traffic jam through a medley of shops. Except here we encountered even more toll gates and spent more than Rs 500 just one way. And yet the roads on this patch (though not part of the NHAI) were not well maintained either. Given the crores of rupees being earned every day from the constant traffic, it was completely puzzling. And perhaps one of the saddest outcomes of the destruction caused by the ‘National Highway’ was that on the way back to Delhi we found that all our favourite dhabas, which had clustered on the side of the road, had now been removed thanks to its expansion. The surviving eateries included a few dingy restaurants, some sickeningly filthy. Obviously, the NHAI has affected their business as well. And some of them have been forced to change their profile from family-friendly restaurants to booze bars. Still others have been pushed way out of easy reach. What used to be a very enjoyable journey — even though the roads were not always in a good condition — has now been transformed into an endless dodging between hurdles. Apart from the precariousness of life in these circumstances, it is a fact that a lot of time and petrol are being wasted. For a country that should be on the fast track, the state of the NHAI is perhaps symbolic representation of all the dreams this country had, which now lie buried under the rubble. We will need a political tsunami to blow this debris away. Twitter: @kishwardesai
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ON RECORD Shiv Kumar
Rapidly
urbanising India is experiencing a construction boom, with built-up area expected to increase from the nearly 21 billion square feet in 2005 to around 104 billion square feet by 2030. With buildings in cities accounting for the bulk of the energy consumption and the resources that produce energy getting scarcer, consumers are saddled with soaring costs for power. Consequently, developers are coming under pressure to construct buildings that consume lower energy, thus enabling occupants to reduce
costs.
The construction industry has now been forced to drawn on experts who have demonstrated success in constructing ‘green buildings’ that are energy efficient. Here Deepak Bhavsar, regional director, Jones Lang la Salle, which has designed energy efficient buildings and retrofitted landmark buildings like New York’s Empire State Building to conserve energy, tells The Tribune of the Indian challenge. What is the potential for improving energy efficiency in Indian buildings? Studies have shown that cities account for 70 per cent of the carbon dioxide emissions worldwide. They also consume 75 per cent of the world’s energy. Buildings are the biggest consumers of energy in cities. So there is big potential, a lot of opportunities to improve energy efficiency in buildings in India. However, the owners of the buildings, the landlords, need to realise this. Apart from the construction cost, there is also an occupancy cost involved. It includes the cost incurred on electricity, water supply, sewage disposal, etc. Over time, people prefer to occupy buildings where the occupancy cost is lower. How can this be done in residential buildings? This is difficult in residential buildings because of the capital costs involved, but the focus should be on office buildings, which consume a lot of energy. The construction of a ‘green building’ should begin from the design stage itself. It should be suited for local conditions. We cannot simply ape western buildings because our conditions are different. For instance, in the case of lighting, natural light should be used as far as possible, and where required, energy-efficient lighting should be resorted to. Similarly, natural ventilation should be an alternative so that the need for air-conditioning is minimised. How much reduction in occupancy cost can be achieved by using such methods? Pilot studies done by us show that a 15-20 per cent reduction is possible. The capital cost incurred in these innovations can be recovered in a few years’ time. How many new projects are going in for the ‘green building’ concept? Developers across India are showing interest in this concept. Everyone wants improved energy utilisation and low operating costs is everyone’s goal. What needs to be done to get more people to adopt this concept? Attention to energy efficiency should be paid right from the time a building is designed and when its plans are approved by the civic body. At the city level, town planners have to play a major part in encouraging energy efficiency. Some cities like Delhi are already showing the way by getting vehicles to switch to CNG. The introduction of the metro is another idea to improve energy usage. In cities like Mumbai and Delhi, where no new land is available, old buildings would need to be retrofitted to improve energy usage. Are there any successful examples of such retro-fitting anywhere in the world? The Empire State Building in New York is an excellent example. We have brought down energy consumption by 38 per cent. The entire investment will be recovered in three years’ time.
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PROFILE: Timeri Murari Harihar Swarup
His first job as a reporter in a small Canadian newspaper ended when a new editor joined. He sacked him as Murari feels “I was a brown person cluttering an all-white newsroom.” The editor told Murari straight: “Your presence disturbs me”. He then walked into the office of The Guardian, London, where they were “embarrassed to find I was Indian, and not Italian, as they had presumed from my name. They gave me a subbing job”. He continued to write features. The highest backhanded compliment he received was from the feature editor there, who said: “You’re like the rest of them here. You don’t have any grammar and you can’t spell.” Murari would visit India once a year to be with his father. During one of these visits, he went to Mysore and gate-crashed into R.K. Narayan’s house. They discussed politics, writing and writers over cups of tea. The next year he visited him again, when Narayan remarked, “How can you write about India from so far away? You only catch a glimpse of life here, like any tourist.” The comment stayed with Murari. He began to tire of the self-imposed exile. The decision to return home was made for him by his father, who was unwell and there were the usual property problems. “As I was waiting for my return, my father passed away and I had to grapple with the property. Both experiences were emotionally exhausting. I squeezed out my first set-in-India contemporary novel, ‘Enduring Affairs’. It was a semi-political novel, set in Madras and America, but I understood what R.K. Narayan meant — I needed to be here to write,” he says. Murari nurtured the ambition of making films. He had a script, but needed money. A couple of years later the money came, on the condition that someone else directed it. When the director, Amol Palekar, and his cameraman read the script, the first comment was, “How could a foreigner write such an Indian copy?” One country that has long fascinated Murari is Afghanistan. While he was never able to travel to Afghanistan, his interest gave birth to a novel, “The Taliban Cricket Club”. The book is set in 2000, when the then ruling Taliban actually supported the creation of a national cricket team.
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Evidence shows
that students from humble backgrounds can excel at school. CBSE Class
12 topper this year is Mohammad Ismat from a poor, remote Manipur
village, who didn’t have the money to even fill his CBSE
registration form. 
Traditionally, girls have
had lesser representation in the IITs and NITs. This year, out of 1.68
lakh girls who registered for the JEE, only 2,886 figured in the IIT
rank list, whereas 21,226 boys were ranked out of the 3.37 lakh who
appeared. In 2009, girls made up12.5 per cent of the undergraduate
admissions to IITs. In NITs too, girls make up just about 13 per
cent.
As
N